Perth. The worlds most isolated city. Sail west and your first landfall is South Africa; to the south, Antartica; Sydney is nearly 4,000km to the East. In fact, if you want to find anywhere with more than about six people you need to go north, to Indonesia, and that’s 3,000 km. So, pretty isolated, then.

But it’s a spacious, confident-looking place, with the Swan River at its heart: broad three lane roads, modern skyscrapers, lots of greenery and trees, blue sky, busier than I’d expected. Free buses in the city centre.

We’re partly self-catering here so we had to go food shopping. Who’d have guessed that Woolworths, here, has green signage and is a food supermarket?

Went out to the airport this morning to pick up the rental car – we flew in too late last night so the rental desk was closed – which turns out to be a Holden Epica, but it looks like a Vauxhall to me. While I was waiting for the car to be brought round, I was idly looking at the display of brochures detailing the various charms of Western Australia, and edging away from a trio of people dressed in a uniform of orange shirts and bush hats. I thought they might want to tell me about Jesus, but it turns out they were volunteer WA tourist-helpers. One of them, Neville, turned out to be enormously helpful on Perth-related topics and, learning we were from Worthing, confessed that he had spent his wild youth there (well, Brighton). Brighton Pier seemed to hold fond memories for him. I think his wild days were long behind him.

The apartment here is close to the central business district (CBD as they say here) and has a bedroom, bathroom, and well-equipped kitchen/diner/lounge, air-con of course. We have a telly which can receive all manner of Murdoch-owned crap, but very little for grownups. We’re wi-fi enabled, but only on production of a credit card; you have to buy a minimum of an hour, but it is a specific hour, not 60 minutes to use when you like, so I have to plan my online time carefully. We also have a balcony with table and chairs, which enables a view of the tennis court. Oh, and a six lane flyover. Not like in Sorrento where we had a balcony from which we looked out on the Bay of Naples and Vesuvius. Then again, Italy doesn’t have kangaroos.

Temperature is in the upper 20s, and there is a SW breeze here which springs up about 11am most days, called the Fremantle Doctor (because it makes you feel better). Some days it gets quite strong. There is a small pool here and I noticed that one of the parasols had blown in the water.

Tomorrow (Friday) we’re going to explore the little towns and beaches to the North. Pam at my French class recommended having a look at Cottesloe, so we’ll do that, and maybe Scarborough. Everyone says we must go to Kings Park, so we’ll do that too. Because of a late change of plane times from Singapore, we’ve got a bit less time in Perth than we thought, and we want to explore a bit, and go to Rottnest Island. More anon.